Donald Trump, the future President of the United States has just made slaves of over 2 million ‘Illegal’ Aliens. A Peoples that now are too afraid of deportation to speak up, or to speak out about low wages, bad treatment, and substandard living conditions. They are now slaves of the United States of America.

In a recent trip to the U.S. to visit the relatives, my wife tried to do shopping in one of the big malls and while watching her and the selections presented by the various stores I came to the conclusion that Americans are, or are being made into Peasants. I could not tell any difference in the selection of drab, shapeless sackcloth being presented by a various Macy’s, Dillard’s Nordstrom’s, J.C. Penny’s you name it, they were all the same. This was extending into the people wandering around the Mall, shapeless clothing. Tights on legs and bags on top. When the sharpest dressers were in Jeans and sneakers, that was saying a lot.

Even in the restaurants, guys in T-Shirts, and women in baggy sacks. Peasants everywhere.

In the current climate the urge to paint Donal Trump as the New Hitler is often the theme, however the ‘The Donald’ is more showman and trickster than absolute dictator. And as showman he will say and do anything that it takes to win. However winning is nothing, the show must go on and the next ‘Thing’ must be won. And should Mr. Trump become Mr. President you will see such a unification of Republican and Democratic Congressional resistance against anything dangerous, that Mr. President should pursue, than has ever been seen before, ever. The world is safe.

The same can not be said of Hilary Clinton. While she is often alluded to as being better than Donald, and forgetting any and all dirt that might be heaved around at the moment. Her belief that the Presidency is hers by Rights, that she believes that the presidency is owed her, and does not have to be earned by a popular vote, is the most condemning sociopathic belief imaginable. This is the root of Fascism, of entitlement of the elite (or self deluded elite), that assumes authority where it is not granted. But should Ms. Clinton become Ms. President the world could slip under such a dark shroud that any and all, real or perceived, enemies and threats to Hilary would fear for their lives. As to threaten Her Reign would be a personal and bloody thing. And the world would tremble.

And while I do favor Bernie Sanders in the next election, anyone (not GOP) plucked off the street could be substituted here, as a last effort to prevent the next disaster.

Whoops: Guess who won? But worst than that, the GOP retained both the House and Senate.

While one can admire Apple for ‘defending’ it’s customers privacy, while also benefiting with the positive advertising. It is probably a moot, and hollow victory as the NSA and the CIA have already broken Apple security.

Not that it shouldn’t be of high importance, the resources required to do the cracking of any particular extraction of an encrypted message sent with a iPhone would most likely exceed the budget of a small country. Which is exactly the point of encryption, making it hard, and expensive to decrypt. Imagine the joviality at the NSA/CIA after the hours of decryption, that the ‘Important’ message turns out to be a high priority, top secret Cookie Recipe from you mothers cookbook.

And thereby is the unspoken truth of encryption the first one is this: you must either decrypt everything, to find what is being said, because if you can only choose strategic messages, choosing the right ones are tantamount.

During WWII monitoring enemy communication was aided by observing the frequency of communication traffic, when frequency increased, something important was being communicated. Modern military communications is continuous and unbroken, transmitting meaningless message traffic, and therefore not highlighting any particular message in the traffic stream that would be required to be decrypted. This would now be a requirement to decrypt everything, in the military traffic stream.

The second Truth is this; The assumption that you can decrypt all the messages is the hight of arrogance and ignorance. Anyone, yes anyone can create an encryption that will be impossible for a machine of any sort to decrypt, and many of these can be hidden to the point that even a human expert directly observing the message can not decipher.

Imagine hiding messages in the continuous email stream called Spam, which now constitutes more that 80% of all email traffic?

Thoughts like this keep the NSA/CIA/FBI up nights, and no matter what Bull Shit they might tell you about the need to have back doors and encryption keys it will NEVER catch all the potential secret messages that terrorists might choose to pass to each other.

The only thing that I hear from the ‘Debates’ were that Parties were running against Parties. There was no debate about anyone being held responsible for decisions, no one responsible for any outcomes. It’s the Party’s choice. The Party that Failed, the Party that succeeded, the party that brought you X or Y.

We the people are voting on, and for PEOPLE, not parties. We know that Kenny never fulfilled any campaign promises, but it’s not his fault, he was doing what his party wanted. Sinn Fein has killed people in the past, therefore the people who now represent Sinn Fein are all murderers, because Sinn Fein, the party, murdered.

There are criminals who have been CONVICTED dozens of times, that do not get painted as a criminal when next they come to trial, why does ANY party get painted with past party issues, by past party members, when it was the members who committed them.

This lame attempt by our politicians to redirect blame to an anonymous ‘Party’ is another attempt to shed personal responsibility for the outcomes of bad decisions and choices. Like cheap used auto dealer, I have to talk to my party…er manager about that deal.

I hold Kenny & Noonan responsible for Water Charges, and paying off the bond holders, not Fine Gael, and Labor.

But if you want to play party politics, fine, Kenny, Noonan you have lost my vote for ANY Fine Gael politician, Labor too, as you had no guts to stand up for your ‘Party’ position, you also will fail to get a vote.

Yesterday while talking with a colleague, I was trying to get across the idea the most ‘programmers’ don’t understand what goes on inside a computer. And his response was, “Does it matter any more?” and while it took me back, I had to respond, “No!” After sleeping on it, I came to a revelation of sorts.

Current IT is equivalent to being a Hot-dog vendor on the street.

And while we IT/CS folk might try and elevate our profession to that status of demigod status we are merely vendors of what the computer can DO!‘ We don’t create the computer, we splash condiments on the hot-dog, and sell it as computing. We don’t even make the condiments anymore, call them libraries, functions written by gnomes in dark caves. And don’t even mention the buns, the dressing ,the cover, beyond us.

In the early days of computing, the common question was, what do I use my computer for. And the first answer often was, you could put your cooking recipes in it. Creating the first cookbook you needed to plugin. The computer is still the same, just that the cookbook has gotten more sophisticated.

I have harped for years that the ‘hardware’ of computing has crippled real advances in computing, more and more systems are opting for generic in their selection of Hot-dog instead, choosing to dress it up with more and intriguing spices and toppings, things like AI and Neural Networks. While these latter are more sophisticated and sexy, they are more or less toppings on the same Hot-dog.

Throughout Science Fiction there is always a belief that man will be ‘Mankind’ while evoking a rational and reasoning mind. And it’s disturbing to think that reason, and considered actions will be how Humans will be perceived. If there is a considered, planned rational approach to traveling among the stars, it will be from an AI consciousness not a Human one, and there by hangs ‘humanity’ if we show who we are, we may not survive, but if we survive without all the elements that make us human, emotions, excitement, joy anger and sadness and wonder, it won’t be us. It will be ‘them’.

Almost all religion speaks of a next world, a heaven if you will. If their followers uphold the values that religion espouses. Christianity, Islam even Norse speaks of Valhalla. But time and space in the real world is a very different place. Each moment a branch in space-time, each moment, a new world. And while in most religions, you must die to enter heaven, in space time that is only a next moment, a new branch. You die, you don’t die, each on it’s own branch. Each a possibility, taken or not.

If you assume that each religion has fundamental elements that provide a moral framework to betterment of society, and the individual. Then each positive action that person betters, improves, does good in the world, betters the next world in the next moment. So each individual, makes the next world a heaven, or a hell of the next world in the next moment. Each branch an upward movement, or a downward one. Good, or not, betterment or not, each leading to a better or worse world for everyones next moment.

Any practitioner, priest, cleric or minister that preaches the worst elements of their religion, calling for any of mankind’s worse traits, they are wishing for the hell, striving for the worst world in the next moment for everyone. And any, who are not religious, who by their actions uplifts, that does good, that betters, are saints, and righteous for they uplift all mankind, in the next moment, in the next world.

There are a number of AI movies arriving in the near future, and the thought that seems to run through them all is that AI, Artificial Intelligence is depicted as being contained within humanoid constructs, frequently Female Humanoid. It brings up several interesting notions;

If one of the defining characteristics of AI is being ‘Self Aware’ can a computer, an AI contained within a box become self aware?

Does it need sensors to see, hear and touch itself to become aware of it’s existence?

Would a box be more or less likely to to identify with Humans if it identified itself as a box that thinks it’s alive?

The boys at the office have been experimenting with Redis at the office however the server they were using was a Windows Server, and therefore the Redis database was running on Windows. So I took a look at the ‘release notes’ from Microsoft and their ‘Lawyer Speak’ was all over it.

MSOpenTech™ Redis on Windows

We strive to have a stable, functionally equivalent and comparably performing version of Redis on Windows. We have achieved performance nearly identical to the POSIX version running head-to-head on identical hardware across the network. Aside from feature differences that help Redis take advantage of the Windows infrastructure, our version of Redis should work in most situations with the identical setup and configuration that one would use on a POSIX operating system.

Having seen this type of language from Microsoft before, in ‘Open’ products like LDAP and ODBC where Microsoft would alter the implementation specification standards to suit themselves, I am wholly obliged to translate their opening paragraph into English for those who don’t ‘get it’. The paragraph should read as follows:

Microsoft’s Proprietary version of Redis for Windows We have not managed to achieve a stable, functional equivalent or comparably performing version of Redis on Windows yet. We have managed to produce performance almost as good as a POSIX version running head-to-head on identically throttled networks connections. Aside from the changes we had to make to enable it to work within a Windows infrastructure, our version of Redis (using a Microsoft infrastructure) could almost perform using a setup and configuration that looks like a Posix operating system.

Reads a bit differently doesn’t it.

I have warned the developers here not to implement a production system based upon Microsoft’s version of Redis. I do not have anything against Redis, just the dark hole MS expects developers to jump into again.

Some time ago a visitor to my site commented that the photo I used as a header was ‘Horses walking on Water’ and I really never took notice, but yes, they do look that way.

But this photo taken with a very cheap digital camera just didn’t bring out the picture well enough to see the shallow beach on which the water was covering, and my clipping of the photo has eliminated the shoreline. The beach, and the inlet are located to the north in Donegal Ireland. A lovely place to visit, if you can avoid the frequent rain. Beyond that further hill, and 1000 miles of ocean, is Greenland.

For those who haven’t got it yet, the Water charges are just another ‘Stealth’ Tax. It was NEVER intended to fund water services. It was an excuse to tax the people of Ireland, suggested to them by the Troikia to pay for the Bank Bailout.

If you think that 0.005€ per liter is magiclly derived from average water usage, to arrive at ~280€ per month you would have been shocked if it had been 1.00€ per liter to arrive at that same monthly figure had the usage data been lower.

I have been observing that as smartphones are becoming smarter, they are also becoming more expensive, there have been a segment that have also entered the market once fill by feature, or dumb phones, but they are almost designed to entice you upgrade to the more expensive and glamorious models.

At the same time, laptops, particularly ChromeBooks are now dropping below the price of the average smart phone. Add in the increasing use of pads, especially Android pads and you have to imagine that MicroSoft should be getting very worried.

Desktop computers, PC’s, are almost non-exsistent these days, traditional laptops are in decline and the base for an exclusive Microsoft Windows empire is crumbling before our eyes.

Aren’t we glad that Bill Gates is still the richest (published) man in the world.